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Feb 20, 2015

With the entertainment extravaganza of the Oscars coming up on Sunday (speaking of which, follow our live-tweet at #OscarsPRP), we took on a couple of pop-culture topics in this week's group chat. First, we forayed into the adult-unfriendly territory of tween TV, inspired by a New York Times column on the awfulness of Nickelodeon's Bella and the Bulldogs. We chatted about whether the show's premise (a girl on a boy's football team? what?!) is still valid, why the same tropes keep coming up in children's and adult programming, exactly how realistic our grown-up shows really are, and the possibility that you can think too much about what your tweens are watching.

Then we turned from TV to movies with a look at Entertainment Weekly's list of 55 movies all kids must watch before they turn 13 or forever be confused by pop-culture references (so no pressure there, 12-year-olds). It looks like our kids won't be having many in-depth conversations with EW writers, because based on this we didn't do too well with the cultural indoctrination. Still, we chatted about kids finding the entertainment they like, judging our entertainmentment faves by their own standards (as a Huffington Post writer did to Amanda's beloved Sixteen Candles), and moving the cultural conversation to things like vlogging, old-timer. (But if you do still want to try for indoctrination, why not check out Pop Culture Happy Hour's list of ways to turn your toddler into a nerd instead?)

Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week: Catherine celebrated efforts to fight childhood obesity; Amanda looked forward to our Oscars live tweet (did we mention, #OscarsPRP?) and to rooting for her cousin in the best adapted screenplay race; Nicole turned up a list of "10 YouTube Stars Your Kids Love" to get you started on that vlogging conversation with your youngsters; and Terri mentioned the 10-Point Comfort Scale she'll be using to judge the dresses on Oscar night (at, ahem, #OscarsPRP).

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. (If you're reading this description somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)